Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

  “Sorry ’bout that,” she blurted out, “There’s always so much to put away, I get a little lost in my head.”

  “No problem.” Distracted as well, I crouched down and gathered my things. Some of my papers were mixed in with hers, I sifted through them.

  She dropped down to collect her books. She smelled like vanilla lotion and citrus perfume. I looked up and she was hella foxy. Like jet-black hair, thick bangs, green eyes, olive skin, tattooed wrists kind of foxy.

  “Um, I’m Kira and when I’m not bumping into strangers, I work here as a junior librarian. So if you need any help, please feel free to ask,” she offered, gathering her books from the floor, “I owe you one.”

  “Thanks, I’m Juliet,” I said. My brain started to get a little fuzzy taking in all of her. I knew my mouth was still open but I couldn’t close it because I couldn’t think.

  “Juliet,” Kira said, “I’ve never met anyone with that name before. I like it.”

  “Yeah uhm, my mom was super into the 1968 movie version of Romeo and Juliet,” I said, heart beating fast, cheeks turning red, “And then I think I was also conceived at a later date while my parents were watching that movie and so as a joke and out of my Mom’s love of that movie, I was named Juliet which I’m thankful for because my little brother’s name is Melvin.”

  Kira laughed and all the pressure I felt mounting inside me because she was pretty and sweet wiped itself away.

  “Well, Juliet, maybe you find me later and say goodbye before you leave, okay?”

  I nodded, and walked off wondering what it’d be like to spend the rest of the day talking to Kira. I forced my big silly grin down and turned back to the Grecian history books. Hours passed between pages. One of the first things I learned about “Sophia” was that she was anchored to the word philosophy. She was also linked to Christian religious traditions according to some of the texts but none of the mentions were specific enough.

  I was suspicious of the Bible. It had never been particularly forthcoming when it came to stories about women. Mary Magdalene wasn’t really a hooker, and Eve didn’t force Adam to eat that apple. Bible stories that painted women as untrustworthy or whore-ish always seemed off to me. Like, what did those messages have to do with God’s love anyway? Most of the stories weren’t even about women directly. They were stories about men in which women had side roles as the mother or the second wife or the daughter-for-sale. Women seemed to always be an after-thought or used to represent temptation. The fact that I grew up in a religious household and had never heard of Sophia further proved to me that the people interpreting Bible were misogynists and didn’t care about anything a wise woman had to say. Christianity wasn’t budging an inch on this quest of mine.

  There were allusions to Sophia’s existence but nothing real. My stomach rumbled. It was almost dinnertime and I still hadn’t done any research on Lolita. The last book stared me in the face ready to take me down. I flipped it over, bored, and with bleary eyes burned through its glossary. Nothing, nothing until Sophia, pg. 48.

  Sophia is the feminine representation of the wisdom of God.

  Oh shit. I read that line over and over again. I read page 47 in order to lead myself into the scope of page 48. Sophia was divine wisdom manifested as a feminine force. God had a feminine side? Or was she an entire entity? Like the Holy Spirit? Was Sophia the Holy Spirit?

  “Attention, the library will be closing in 30 minutes,” blared the PA system. Jolted straight out of my thoughts, I scooped up the books I needed and ran to the copy machine. I dropped change into the first machine and copied page after page of Sophia-based information. A few paper jams sucked up some of my time and I cursed at the machine.

  “Watch out. That one’s a little sensitive,” said a voice from behind me.

  I turned around and it was Kira.

  “So should I kick it,” I asked, trying not to stammer or embarrass myself. “What’s the secret?”

  “It’s more of a hip check,” Kira met me halfway, and bumped her hip against the coin slot. The copy machine rumbled again and printed. “Why aren’t you just checking them out?”

  “I don’t have a library card.”

  “Well, next time you’re here, come find me. We’ll take care of that.”

  She walked away. I watched her walk away and at once I wanted her Doc Martens and her attention. Somehow, I managed to get it together. I made the copies I needed and left the library. My bus appeared on the horizon. The phrase “Feminine representation of the wisdom of God” rolled over and over in my head. I still needed to find Lolita; maybe Sophia would lead the way. Maybe in the middle of it all I could make out with Kira.

  11. Banana Republics and Cycles of the Moon

  Read everything you can push into your skull. Read your mother’s diary. Read Assata. Read everything Gloria Steinem and bell hooks write. Read all of the poems your friends leave in your locker. Read books about your body written by people who have bodies like yours. Read everything that supports your growth as a vibrant, rebel girl human. Read because you’re tired of secrets.

  Raging Flower

  * * *

  No one was home at Harlowe’s. At first, I wondered if Harlowe had any baseball bats in the house for protection. But as the quiet settled in around me, I realized I had an entire house to myself. That never happened at home. Even if there was a 15-minute delay between when I got home and when my family got home, I could always hear the neighbors or the ambulance sirens. There was always immediate proof that a million others were nearby. Here, all I heard were the crickets and the occasional ting of someone’s bike bell.

  Plopped on Harlowe’s couch with a bag of string bean flavored potato chips, I went through my bag because I was already bored. Friday night alone, no friends, and I’d spent the day at the library. My nerd points were out of control. Phen’s book, A People’s History of the United States, was at the bottom of my bag. Ugh, Phen. I still felt bad about that day with him. He might have been an asshole but at least he wanted to hang out and read books. I flipped through his book and got caught up in reading it.

  I felt weird reading something written by a white man in Harlowe’s house. Like as if I’d broken some sort of unspoken rule of living in your feminism: no man-thoughts ever. But it didn’t have the same vibe; it felt like this dude was saying, “Hey you, wake up, look what happened!” The political content was so heavy, like as if living in a post-9/11 world where constant color-coded levels of alleged threats of terrorism blasted from every television wasn’t jarring enough, A People’s History highlighted so many ways the U.S. had always been involved in acts of terrorism and brutality. My parents raised me to believe that I should be proud to live in the land of the free. But that didn’t vibe with reading about how The United Fruit Company, backed by the United States, exploited the hell out of Latin America all in the name of bananas and coffee and other natural resources.

  I read the passages on Latin America a few times over. I knew nothing about that region. As an educated Latina, shouldn’t I have known something? Why would our democratic nation take over other people’s lands, drain them of all the beautiful things native to their soil, and then enslave the populations living there to harvest it all? That seemed too fucked up to me. Like, wasn’t once with the Native Americans enough and didn’t that kind of happen by accident? The pilgrims didn’t mean to kill the Indians with yellow fever or whatever, right? The underbelly of America creeped me out; I’d assumed the violent patriarchy was some new bully we had to face, not some old devil who never got put down.

  I wrote down the terms that stuck out: United Fruit Company, Guatemala, U.S. interest, Good Neighbor Policy, banana republic. The book mentioned “banana republics” but didn’t define them. What the hell is a banana republic? I looked through the index and found nothing. I scoured a beat-up dictionary on Harlowe’s bookshelf for answers.

  Banana Republic: a pejorative term that refers to a politically unstable country limited to primary product
ions (e.g. bananas) ruled by a small self-elected elite…

  What the unholy fuck? I flipped open my phone. No new messages or missed calls. Of course not. Why would my girlfriend even call me? It’d been two weeks almost since I left home and we’d barely had one solid conversation. Still, though, this banana republic shit was important. This was the type of stuff we talked about in school. I had to call Lainie; if she picked up, I knew she’d care. I dialed Lainie while I paced in circles. She picked up. It was a miracle.

  “Hi, babe,” she said, as if we’d talked yesterday or the day before.

  “Lanes, do you know what a ‘banana republic’ is?” I asked, twirling my baby hairs into a frenzy.

  “Yeah it’s the only place I can get khakis that fit right. Speaking of, I need to go there and get a pair and some plain gray T’s.” I knew she was mentally cataloguing her list of “must have” items of clothing.

  “No, Lainie, you can’t shop there anymore. It’s like named after some fucked up shit the United States government did to Latin America for their bananas and control over them and shady stuff.”

  “Yeah, don’t you think I know what a banana republic is? I’m surprised you didn’t,” she said. She sounded amused.

  “Wait, this is like a thing people know? You knew this?! This is messed up, Lainie, like some store is profiting off a name that comes from fucking over people in Latin America. Isn’t this the kind of thing we should be protesting? Or boycotting? Or one of those things you’re probably doing at Democratic Lesbian camp?”

  “Juliet, calm down. It’s just the name of the store, like the Gap. Awesome khakis again and the name doesn’t mean anything nowadays anyway. Relax. Jeez, we’ve barely talked and you call me with this?”

  “I’ve called you. You haven’t called or texted me. I’m surprised we’re even on the phone now.” I strode back and forth across the living room. “I thought you’d get hype over this corporate-funded, materialistic joke on an entire region of the globe. Please, don’t shop there.”

  “Stop. I can’t not shop there. Don’t be ridiculous, Jules, and I can’t drop everything to call you and text you all the time.”

  “Your days are so busy that you can’t call me? That’s impossible.” I sucked a puff out of my thick plastic inhaler.

  “What do you even know about my days here, Juliet? You’re off with Harlowe Brisbane, The Pussy Lady. I doubt she’s got your time scheduled within an inch of your life,” Lainie spoke sharp, her voice pointed. “You have no idea how much pressure I’m under. I’m not doing this with you, right now. Email me your address at Harlowe’s. I’ve got something to send you.”

  I heard the chime of an AOL instant message from her end of the phone and then Lainie hung up. That was it. That’s all we said to each other. The albuterol-filled inhaler made me jittery. I couldn’t relax. Was I crazy? Did I just Harlowe-out on her? She just fucking hung up on me.

  The front door creaked open and I jumped.

  “Hello, sweet Juliet,” swooned Harlowe. “I brought us delicious things for dinner from my friend’s communist farm.”

  She carried a bunch of reusable grocery bags. I rushed to the door to give her a hand; she hugged me close, bags still in hand. We carried the bags into the kitchen. I hopped up on the counter and watched her put the food away. The Joan of Arc wall clock chimed the hour.

  “How was your day?” Harlowe asked.

  “I yelled at my girlfriend for shopping at Banana Republic.”

  “It’s funny that you have a girlfriend that shops at Banana Republic.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, do you shop there?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s bougie.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Fair, but see the thing is I really just wanted to ask her why she hasn’t made more effort to call me and talk to me. I wanted to tell her that I miss her but instead I bitched about imperialism and the United Fruit Company and khakis and shit and then she hung up on me.”

  “She hung up on you?”

  Harlowe’s eyes widened, amused, annoyed for me it seemed.

  “Juliet, that is bullshit. Like, one, it’s just rude, like absolutely rude to hang up on someone. Unless you were being abusive towards her but I don’t think you were, were you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Annoying maybe, but not abusive.”

  “Ok. Two, besides missing her, why did where she shops all of a sudden bother you so much? I mean from the beginning the whole Banana Republic thing would have been a deal breaker for me, but why do you care now?”

  Why did I care?

  “I don’t know.”

  Harlowe patted my knee and handed me a bag of granola. She pulled peppers, mushrooms, and carrots from the re-usable bag. The chop-chop of vegetables being split open on the counter filled the kitchen. I didn’t move from my spot on the counter. My Mom would have already been love-yelling at me to get off and help but Harlowe wasn’t my mom. Harlowe was something else. I watched her slice peppers and carrots into slivers. She heated up flatbreads on an iron skillet and added them to a plate. She filled small bowls with hummus and mango chutney.

  “I’m not exactly sure why I care so much. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know that the name ‘Banana Republic’ actually meant something, you know. It’s a tongue-in-cheek fuck-you to countries that have been exploited for their natural resources, and I just can’t believe I didn’t know and she did. And like, I think I feel cheap. I’ve stood in that store with her a million times and have always felt my skin crawling. None of the clothes were made to fit me. None of the people shopping in there look like me. The few times I’ve been in there by myself, I’ve been followed around the store by employees. Everyone is white, skinny, and rich and oblivious to the fact that I’m a person. I thought all those feelings were in my head, figments of my imagination, but maybe they’re not. Maybe there’s something ingrained in a store like that that’s made me feel that way. It’s bigger than the store too, right? Everything is like that in this world. It’s heavy.”

  “Heavy as a huge set of beautiful ovaries. Get a little hysterical, Juliet. I mean that’s why vibrators were invented, right? Ask the questions that make you feel like your heart is blasting out of your chest. Society, government, white supremacist power structures, blatant hatred of women, and a whole slew of other institutions are all working together to make it so that you gotta dig to find out even a shred of truth. They don’t want you to dig. That’s how this world is set up. People don’t even want to tell you that your vagina is called a vagina, you know? Why would someone spell out the violent and racist history of their business? Capitalism, baby.”

  “Word.”

  As we ate, the conversation shifted into lighter things. Harlowe told me about her communist friends with the farm who were also doulas and played in a hillbilly funk band. The one named Jug also played the jug. I shared in-depth details about the daydream-inducing encounter with Kira the smoking hot librarian and all of the foxy dykes at Blend and how they wanted her to do a reading there. I told her that I wasn’t exactly sure what white allies were and asked her why Maxine seemed upset after the Octavia Butler workshop and if Maxine was coming home tonight.

  “Maxine has her own place over on Northeast Alberta, but tonight is a Zaira night,” Harlowe shrugged.

  Escandalo. Tres Mujeres, Una Relación. Portland.

  “Wait, what’s a Zaira night? Like are they doing another workshop?” I asked. Jealousy crept in quick; I wanted to be there too.

  “No, not another workshop. Zaira is Maxine’s secondary partner.” Harlowe said.

  My mouth dropped open. “You’re the primary and Zaira’s the secondary. That’s for real? Y’all have Maxine on different nights. This is how the poly thing works?” I asked, eyes wide. I needed to get myself together.

  “Yes and no. Maxine shares her time as she sees fit with whomever she wants. This is how the ‘poly thing’ works for us. Zair
a and I aren’t romantic partners but we’ve known each other for a long time. There’s a mutual respect. Plus, she’s one of the most vibrant and beautiful women I’ve ever met. I’m happy that they found love together, too.”

  Harlowe’s face was golden, even in the dark. And what she said was the gayest, most beautiful, love poetry. If Harlowe could be in love with Maxine while Maxine and Zaira loved on each other, then I could definitely have a crush on Kira the librarian and Maxine and still love Lainie, even after all this Banana Republic business.

  Harlowe’s mind seemed like it was somewhere else. She’d rolled a cigarette and set it down by her thigh, unsmoked. I ate more food and grabbed two Sierra Nevadas from the fridge.

  Harlowe placed a calendar on my lap. It was almost as wide as my chubby brown thighs.

  “It’s based on the cycles of the moon. I track my period with it, and I think it’ll be integral in helping us keep track of the women we’re researching.”

  A bright, yellow moon, fluid in its watercolor-based design, stretched across the front of the calendar.

  “You want me to track their periods?”

  Harlowe laughed. Her laugh could also be mistaken for a cackle, a joyous cackle. She flipped through the calendar.

  “No, I mean, yes. if somehow you can. Oh my goddess, that would be brilliant!” Harlowe, cackle-laughed again. “But I was thinking we could mark their birthdays and their astrological signs and not only track their accomplishments but maybe connect them in some greater spiritual, lunar warrior kind of way. That’d be rad, right?”